


No room left for echoes

by lounonymouse



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (but it's quite light), Cats, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Humor, M/M, One Shot, POV Harry Potter, Pet Whisperer, Pets, Pre-Relationship, goldfish, mentions of depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-21 06:48:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19997644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lounonymouse/pseuds/lounonymouse
Summary: No matter what Harry did, the words steadfastly refused to make sense: 'Draco Malfoy: Pet Whisperer'.In which Harry Potter steals a goldfish and Draco Malfoy loves his one-eyed cat.





	No room left for echoes

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this is a bit silly but hopefully sweet too. It's my first time writing Drarry so I hope you enjoy it! I've been reading Drarry for ages and long wanted to write it (god how I love those two boys!) and only just finally found the confidence to do it :)
> 
> I wanted to write something that captured the moment at the beginning of a relationship when you're really knocked over by the potential, by how good you can see things might be. 
> 
> Thanks so much to M for the beta read - your support and advice was *chefs kiss*. 
> 
> Note: please do not repost this work anywhere and do not translate without seeking permission first. The characters, sadly, do not belong to me. They are the property of J K Rowling and her publishers and no money is being earned from this fic.

The sign was simple enough: small, brass, rectangular, four words carved in an elegant font. The house it was attached to was simple, too: a crisp white townhouse in a tree-lined street a mere hop, step and jump from the rambling parklands of Hampstead Heath. There was a one-eyed ginger cat perched on the neighbour’s fence watching Harry with disdain, but not even it was the cause of his current problem.

No, it was the actual _words_ on the sign that had Harry squinting, turning his head this way and that way, hoping that if he could catch them in the right light, from the right angle, then they might suddenly make sense. He tried looking from the corner of his eye. He tried turning his back on the sign and spinning around to catch it unawares. He tried a double-take, a triple-take, a quadruple-take. The cat watched him the entire time. But no matter what Harry did, the words steadfastly refused to make sense. 

_Draco Malfoy: Pet Whisperer._

Nothing about these four words made sense to Harry. Of course each _individual_ word made sense—he wasn’t _that_ dim-witted, despite what some people said. Rather, it was the particular combination of words that had him scratching his head. He knew who Draco Malfoy was (oh boy did he ever) and he knew what a pet was (he glanced at the ginger cat; the cat blinked her one eye at Harry) and he knew what a whisperer was. Sort of. But he didn’t understand what Draco Malfoy was doing in Muggle London with a sign on his front door that proclaimed him to be a ‘pet whisperer’.

Just to be sure, Harry took several steps back to look at the sign from a distance but its meaning continued to allude him; the cat flicked her tail before turning her one-eyed scowl on the rest of the tree-lined street, bored with Harry and his theatrics.

It was Luna’s fault he was here ( _wasn’t it always?_ thought Harry). She had been lounging on his couch— _her_ couch, he guessed, since she appeared to be living with Harry now and sleeping on the couch and eating his biscuits and loudly cleaning the Wrakspurts out of his fridge at 3am and filling his bath with Fanta and shrivelfig and Harry’s favourite sneakers (“It’s for the Blibbering Humdingers, Harry. You have a colossal-level infestation of them, don’t you know?”). Harry didn’t mind so much. He actually rather liked having another person in his flat after so many years living by himself—another heartbeat, another set of footsteps, another voice. Ever since he moved out of Hermione and Ron’s house and into his modern, spacious but somehow soulless one-bedroom flat in Islington, there had been an echo. Every step he took seemed to reverberate around the too-empty space to bounce back at him like a hundred Stupifies, crashing into his stomach and leaving him breathless. So it was nice to have Luna there, filling his flat with her things and herself and her sing-song voice until there was no room left for echoes.

But it was still her fault.

She’d been lounging on her couch, carving apples into swans, her legs flung over the armrest, when she’d suddenly turned to him and said, “You know, Harry, if you want to understand why your goldfish is depressed you really should see a specialist.”

Harry had immediately turned to the goldfish in question with a frown. It wasn’t _his_ , exactly. He had found it. Sort of. _Technically_ , it was evidence in a case. _Technically_ , he’d stolen it.

Harry had only been a fully-fledged Auror for two months when he’d got the call. The murder of a war orphan and her aunt, a break and enter gone wrong. The crime scene had been … well, Harry can’t remember much—flashes of broken furniture, a rag doll, a smashed cup on the kitchen tiles, too much red. The other Aurors stood around the lounge with their hands on their hips, eyes downcast, muttering things like, “Terrible business,” “Such senseless waste,” “The paperwork is going to be a nightmare,” and Harry had found himself stumbling on autopilot toward the only living thing left in the room: a goldfish swimming circles in a small round fishbowl. He wasn’t sure if it was a trance, if he’d been Confunded, or if he had finally succumbed to the breakdown people had been whispering he was on the verge of for months, all he knew was that he needed to get out of that house and he needed to take the goldfish with him. So, he’d scooped up the bowl, water lapping over the sides as he marched out, ignoring the calls of the other Aurors. He’d handed in his notice by owl the next day and that was that: Harry Potter, Boy Who Lived Twice, Saviour of the Wizarding World, was an Auror no more.

No one had tried to claim the goldfish so he figured it was as good as his.

The goldfish was a splodge of fiery orange and silvery white in a squat, round tank filled with pebbles, a castle (transfigured to look like Hogwarts) and plastic seaweed. The fishbowl sat on an empty bookshelf and Harry made sure to sprinkle in the papery fish-food once a day but that was about the extent of their relationship. He’d never intended to get a pet and didn’t understand what had possessed him to take the fish from a crime scene but he was used to the creature now. He quite liked the gentle _pop pop pop_ noise it occasionally made as it blew bubbles on the surface of the water, even if the thought of how and why it came to be in his possession sometimes left him red-cheeked and a little breathless.

He’d watched the goldfish—bobbing in the water, facing away from them—and frowned deeper. “My goldfish is depressed?” he’d asked in a voice croaky from disuse. Even with Luna camping on his couch he sometimes found he could go hours, days without talking to anyone. 

“Oh yes,” Luna had said, voice breezy and sing-song as always, “horribly so. So you really ought to see someone about it. Luckily, I know just the person.” She’d flung a receipt at him, on the back of which she had already scribbled a Highgate address, and then quickly bundled Harry out the front door, a fishbowl with an apparently depressed goldfish clutched to his stomach.

So to find himself now standing in front of the most confusing combination of words in the English language, well, Harry didn’t know what on Merlin’s bushy beard was happening and he wasn’t entirely sure he was game to find out. 

_No_ , thought Harry, shaking his head. _This is too much to deal with on a Tuesday_. He hugged the fishbowl tighter and turned to leave but quickly spun back around when he heard the front door swing open and a harried looking Draco Malfoy appeared, wild eyes scanning the street behind Harry.

“Have you seen a— Ferdinand! There you are!” Draco pushed passed Harry and over to the one-eyed cat. He stood in front of the creature, arms akimbo. “Why do you keep running away on me, Ferdinand?”

“You’re the pet whisperer,” said Harry before he could stop himself. “Shouldn’t you already know the answer to that?”

Draco threw a glare over his shoulder at Harry before picking up the cat and hugging it to his chest. The cat’s scowl deepened.

When his childhood rival finally turned to fully face him, Harry got his first good look at Draco Malfoy in six years. Harry catalogued everything he saw: tall (very tall), platinum blond hair (surprisingly wavy), thin, pointy (but very, _very_ good looking), muggle clothes (argyle sweater, jeans, polished brown brogues), flushed cheeks, long fingers and furrowed brow.

Harry found that while each catalogued feature on its own was simple enough, he was just as perplexed by how they all came together to make up Draco Malfoy, twenty-four-year-old Death Easter-cum-Pet-Whisperer, as he was by the words on the sign (especially the ‘very good-looking’ part).

Harry’s relationship with Draco Malfoy was complicated (oh boy was it ever). He had not seen the man since his day in court six years ago when Harry had stood up in front of the Wizengamot to vouch for him and his mother. “Draco Malfoy is a world-class git,” he’d said to a room of stern-faced witches and wizards, “but he’s also a child who was brain-washed by a bigoted father and manipulated by an evil bigoted megalomaniac. So don’t make an example out of a child, make a _better man_ out of him.”

After the verdict had been read out (one-year house arrest, half his inheritance in reparations and a one-page heartfelt, genuine apology in the _Daily Prophet_ ) Harry had wordlessly handed back Draco’s wand and nodded at the other boy’s simple: ‘thanks.’ And that was that. He’d disappeared from wizarding society the second his house arrest was up, leaving Harry with a strange propensity to sit alone in his kitchen with a cooling cup of tea and the thought _I wonder what Draco Malfoy is doing now_ popping into his head unbidden and unwanted (he had never once considered ‘pet whisperer’ as an option—the most creative he had ever been was ‘librarian by day, exotic dancer by night’). But no matter how thoroughly Harry scolded himself every time that unbidden and unwanted thought had popped into his head, he never could stop thinking about Draco Malfoy, even when the git wasn’t to be found for six whole years. He just couldn’t help it. Left over from Sixth Year no doubt. And now here the man was. Holding a very grumpy one-eyed cat on a pretty tree-lined street outside a simple white townhouse with a confusing brass sign.

Draco cleared his throat loudly, giving Harry the sort of once over that left him in no doubt he was being equally thoroughly catalogued. “Ferdinand, bless his evil black heart,” explained Draco, “is the one animal able to withstand my gifts and I am thus far, unfortunately, unable to understand the reason or reasons behind his repeated attempts to break out of my house and wreak havoc upon the neighbourhood.” He suddenly looked down and pouted— _pouted_ —at Ferdinand and, in what quickly took top place as The Most Confusing Thing to Happen on a Very Confusing Day, began to talk in a syrupy baby voice directed at the cat. “And I bet you’ve been digging up Mrs Haversham’s azaleas again, haven’t you, Ferdy-werdy? She’ll be round my house this afternoon to yell at me and wave her knitting at me and you won’t care one teeny tiny bit, will you? Is that your plan? Are you trying to get me killed? Death by knitting needle, hey?”

Harry shook his head, trying to focus on the one piece of information he could handle.

“So you’re actually _serious_ about this?” he said.

Draco looked up, scratching a finger under Ferdinand’s chin. He frowned. “This?”

Harry waved a hand at the offending sign. “ _This_.”

Draco sniffed, jutting his chin high. “I most certainly am,” he said, thankfully using his haughty, non-baby voice again. “I am London’s foremost Pet Whisperer. With references from dukes, duchesses, MPs and the Queen herself. Now, have you come here to mock me or are you here to let me help you with your depressed goldfish?”

Harry looked down at the fishbowl half-forgotten in his arms. “Why does everyone think she’s depressed?”

Draco snorted. “Me? Because I am, as mentioned, London’s foremost Pet Whisperer so I _know_ she’s depressed. I also know that _she_ is a _he_. But I can’t vouch for why anyone else would think it.” He gave Harry another once over, this one with a tilted brow.

“I don’t really think she’s depressed,” said Harry, as he watched the little streak of gold and white duck behind the castle. “Or him, rather.”

“Then why are you here?” There was no malice in the tone, more a genuine curiosity.

 _Why am I here? Good question_ , thought Harry. _A very good question to which I do not have an answer_. Or, no, he _did_ in fact have an answer. “Luna,” he said.

“Ah,” said Draco knowingly. “Then you’d best follow me in.”

Turning on his heel with more gravitas than anyone had a right to possess while cuddling a grumpy one-eyed cat and professing to be London’s foremost Pet Whisperer, Draco strode through the open front door and disappeared down a long, dark hallway.

“This is madness,” said Harry to no one in particular. Perhaps he was talking to his goldfish.

For a few blissful seconds, he considered walking away but if Luna wanted Harry to see Draco Malfoy about a depressed goldfish then that is what would happen, sooner or later. She was tricky like that, much more Slytherin than people gave her credit for. So Harry decided he preferred to get this whole ordeal out of the way as quickly as possible. Like ripping off a plaster, he reasoned.

Stepping up into the house, Harry kicked the door shut behind him and then stopped dead in his tracks.

He shook his head.

He squinted, turning his head this way and that way.

He turned side on and looked from the corner of his eye.

He did a double-take. A triple-take. Quadruple.

It was no good.

No matter how he looked at it, the hallway was _still_ lined with artistic black and white photos of Ferdinand. A good hundred or so. And no matter how artistic and how black and white the photos were, the cat looked royally pissed off in each and every one of them. 

“Between you and me,” whispered Harry to his goldfish as he finally shuffled down the hallway, “I think Draco Malfoy might have gone insane.”

“Not insane, Potter,” said Draco from inside the room at the end of the hallway. “Just unabashedly fond of his cat.”

Harry stepped into the room to find it was a small reception filled with well-worn leather chairs, a coffee table overflowing with magazines, and a glass desk. There was a white-haired lady with a violet cardigan, frilly blouse, pearls and gold-rimmed glasses sitting behind the desk, a frowning Draco Malfoy loitering at her shoulder and a still-grumpy Ferdinand in his arms. 

“This is Marge,” said Draco before Harry could comment further about the photos. He nodded toward the old white-haired lady. “She is a woman of impeccable taste and my receptionist. Marge, this is Harry Potter, he has a depressed goldfish. Please make Mr Potter a cup of tea, Marge, while I have a word with Ferdinand and then send him in when I tell you too.”

“Right you are, Mr Malfoy,” said Marge. She gave Harry a long look up and down. Harry wondered for a moment if she was related to Ferdinand—they shared a remarkably similar expression.

Draco disappeared into a room behind the reception, the door slamming behind him. 

_Right_ , thought Harry, staring at the door. _Let’s hope this day has reached peak weird._

Harry carefully lowered himself into one of the comfy leather chairs, the goldfish bowl resting on his lap, and watched Marge make him a cup of tea. His insistence that he took his tea black, one sugar, resulted in her handing him a cup of white tea— _just a splash of milk, mind, we’re not barbarians_ —and no sugar— _sugar is for plebeians, dear_. She then trundled behind her desk and sat with a huff, squirming until she was comfortable. She resumed her quiet glaring at Harry.

Harry sipped his awful tea and hummed his thanks. He looked around the reception—no photos of Ferdinand but there was a large painting of a one-eyed ginger blob that took up a large chunk of the east wall and made Harry almost spill his tea.

“The daughter of one of Mr Malfoy’s clients painted that as thanks,” explained Marge without taking her eyes off Harry.

“It’s lovely,” said Harry.

“It’s a monstrosity,” said Draco, his head appearing around the office door again. Harry jerked in surprise, spilling tea over the edge of his cup and onto his pants. Thankfully it missed the fishbowl. “Send in Mr Potter now please, Marge,” said Draco and then vanished again.

Marge cleared her throat. “Mr Malfoy will see you now, Mr Potter,” she said.

“Oh will he?” muttered Harry. “That’s good to know.”

Marge watched Harry struggle to balance his cup and the fishbowl as he stood. Once standing, he inched carefully toward the office door, trying not to spill any more liquids. When he got there he realised he was short of free hands and, while a wandless Alohamora was well within his capabilities, he didn’t think performing such a spell in front of Marge would go down too well.

Harry looked from his full hands to the door and back again. He looked at Marge. Marge looked back. Harry sighed.

Draco popped his head around the door again, looking flustered. “Well? Are you coming, Potter?”

“Couldn’t think of anything better,” said Harry and stepped through the now thankfully open door. Draco closed the door behind them and Harry found himself in a small but cozy office. There were no more photos or paintings of Ferdinand—though the cat himself was sat on one corner of Draco’s desk, watching Harry with his one eye half closed. Instead, there were a handful of certificates—an ornate ‘Doctor of Pet Whispering’ was Harry’s favourite—a vase of peonies, several overflowing bookshelves, a tortoise paperweight, a bowl of red and white sweets and an old-fashioned typewriter.

“So,” said Harry, setting his cup of unwanted tea on the edge of Draco’s desk and the fish bowl firmly in his lap. Draco slumped into the chair on the opposite side of the desk with an alarming lack of Malfoyness. He waved his hand for Harry to go on. “What made you decide to set yourself up in Muggle London as a charlatan?” said Harry.

Draco rolled his eyes. “Is it your inherent distrust of _me_ or is it that you think—and please do bear in mind that you are a wizard and magic exists, along with centaurs and flying broomsticks and ghosts and wands etcetera etcetera—that the ability to communicate with animals is so far beyond the realm of possibility that I must be making it up?”

Harry had the good sense to blush.

Draco steepled his hands and blew a wayward strand of blond hair from his face. “I mean, if it’s the former then there’s nothing I can do to dissuade you. Despite your words at my trial and the fact that I have since spent six Dark-magic-free years living with Muggles, causing no harm whatsoever, I am, according to you, evil for life.” He raised a single brow at Harry, who had the good sense to deepen his blush. “If it’s the latter, of course, then I have one word for you.” He paused, leaning forward, a casual hand running the length of Ferdinand once, twice, three times. “Parseltongue,” he said and leant back. 

Both of Harry’s brows shot up. “Are you saying _you_ have Parseltongue?”

Draco snorted. “No. I’m just reminding you of the possibilities. Wizards have long been able to communicate with animals in various ways. Why couldn’t I—despite my apparently unwavering evilness—be one of them?”

Harry starred into the fishbowl and wondered if he’d been missing out. Had he been able to talk to his goldfish all this time but just hadn’t tried? True, he didn’t talk much to anyone these days. Not even Ron and Hermione, not for lack of trying (on their part at least). For months after he quit the Aurors they had ambushed him with concerned frowns and ‘we just want to make sure you’re okay, Harry’ but once he’d moved out and they’d tied the knot and had their first child, well, they just didn’t have the time for ambushes anymore. They still tried—the owls still came but they always left empty handed. Harry wasn’t ignoring his best friends, he just … didn’t have anything to say. So even if his goldfish could talk, what would he have said to it? He shook his head.

“But that’s for magical creatures,” he said. “Not …” He waved his hand at Ferdinand and then his fish and then at the whole office.

Draco waved Harry’s argument away with a flutter of his hands. “Immaterial,” he said. “The simple fact of the matter is I have an affinity with animals, Potter.”

Harry blinked. “You? Have an affinity? With animals?” Harry had no doubt his expression said, _but what about the Hippogriff?_

Draco scowled. “ _Muggle_ animals, Potter. Cats and dogs and horses and—” he narrowed his gaze at the bowl in Harry’s arms “—goldfish.” 

“Ah,” said Harry as though he understood. He did not.

Draco flashed a smile as bright as a Lumos Maxima—Harry had no idea Draco possessed such a weapon and thought seriously about contacting the Wizengamot to have it outlawed at once—and tilted his head. “Perhaps I can prove it to you,” he said. “Which is an excellent idea on three counts. One, I will prove my skills to you. Two, I will be able to fix your goldfish’s depression—”

“I really doubt she’s depressed.”

“—and _three_ , we can both get on with our lives quicker than if we sit here arguing all day.”

Draco’s last point felt like a tiny sword to Harry’s heart. If he looked really, really, _really_ deeply within himself he would see that, despite the oddness of today, this was more fun than he’d had in a long time. He was reminded of how much he had always enjoyed bickering with the blond. Sure, there had at times been a genuine, life-threatening, hate-filled, violent dislike between them but there was also quite a lot that set Harry’s heart racing in a way that left him feeling invigorated and challenged and alive. Harry had a sneaking suspicion that Draco Malfoy, for all his flaws, was the kind of person who could chase away an echo, too.

“Okay,” he said, ignoring the rise of all sorts of uncomfortable but alluring feelings bubbling up in him from somewhere deep and forgotten. “Let’s see you in action, then.” He placed the bowl on the desk; all Harry could see of the goldfish was a sliver of orange between the castle turrets.

“What’s his name?” asked Draco, splaying both forearms on the desk and leaning forward. He rested his chin on the wood of the desk, his nose almost pressed up to the glass.

“Couldn’t he tell you that?” said Harry. Draco rolled his eyes as Harry shrugged. “Truth is I’ve got no idea,” he said.

Draco peered at Harry around the corner of the fishbowl. “No idea?”

Harry shrugged again. “I don’t know what her … eh, sorry _his_ name is. Maybe I should have asked?” At Draco’s appalled expression, Harry hurried on. “I mean, I don’t know because I stole him. Or rescued him. Yeah, rescued is a better word. From a crime scene.” He shook his head as his mind was suddenly filled with broken furniture, a rag doll, a cracked tea cup and red. So much red.

Harry took a deep breath. “I couldn’t ask his previous owner what his name was so …”

“You didn’t think to give him a name yourself?” said Draco.

Harry shook his head, looking at his hands in his lap—they were curled into fists. “No,” he said.

“So what do you call him when you talk to him?” 

“I don’t?”

Draco narrowed his eyes. “Don’t call him anything or you don’t talk to him?”

Harry felt the blush returning to his face, creeping from his neck to his ears. “Both I guess? Except for before, in your hallway, when I saw the photos—that was the first time I’ve ever talked to him, now that I think about it. But, listen, aren’t you supposed to be giving him the third-degree, not me?”

Draco shook his head but returned his focus to the goldfish. He stared at the water, plastic seaweed gently swaying. He stared for a long, long time. So long, Harry began to feel uncomfortable. He didn’t like to sit still. It left too much room for the echo to return.

Before Harry could crack, Draco’s face lit up again with that Lumos Maxima smile. “I’ll call you Winston,” he said. His eyes flicked to Harry as if daring him to disagree. Harry waved him on.

“Winston,” said Draco again. “How do you do, Winston? My name is Draco Malfoy.”

Harry struggled to contain his snort as Draco’s greeting elicited no response from the shy goldfish.

“Why are you hiding, Winston?” asked Draco, tilting his head to the side. Predictably, the fish didn’t answer. For twenty minutes they sat in silence while Draco frowned at the fish and Harry bounced his knee. He was just about to stand and suggest they end this whole charade when a flash of orange and white caught his eye. The goldfish— _Winston_ —was poking his head out from behind the castle. Harry opened his mouth but Draco silenced him with a raised finger. 

_That’s just rude._ Harry slumped back in his chair, folding his arms. He glanced at Ferdinand but his single eye was closed and he was purring, a cat-got-the-cream smile on his face as he dozed.

In protest, he tried ignoring what his former rival and his traitorous fish were up to but he couldn’t help leaning forward again as he noticed a strange thing happening.

The fish and Draco were having a conversation.

No words were uttered but the fish was swishing about, furiously opening and closing his mouth and nodding his little head up and down. Though Draco kept his mouth closed, he seemed to be both listening to and responding to the fish with dancing eyebrows and jerks of his head and shimmering eyes. Those grey eyes that Harry suddenly thought had probably always told tales with the merest flash of light or shadow in their depths. Harry found himself leaning forward, starring transfixed at those eyes.

The spell was broken when Draco suddenly sat back. “Well,” he said, drumming his hands on the edge of the desk.

Harry jerked back and squirmed in his seat, wishing there was a spell he could utter that would remove the blush from his cheeks. He hoped that Draco hadn’t caught him staring with such a dopey, school-girl-with-a-crush kind of gaze.

“Well what?” he said.

“Well,” said Draco. “That was very … illuminating.”

Harry huffed and glowered out the window. This was all Luna’s fault. _Just wait until I get home_ , he thought. _I’ll empty the bath and see how she copes with the Blibbering Humdingers then._

He waited for Draco to continue but when there was nothing but silence he was forced to look back at the other man. He expected a smirk, a scowl, a cruel smile. But—and, really, Harry should have predicted that on today of all days when nothing ordinary and expected could seem to happen—Draco was looking back at him with a soft smile.

A soft, understanding, gentle smile.

“What?” snapped Harry. He just didn’t know what to do with a soft-smiling Draco Malfoy. It was as incongruous to him as the sign on the front door.

But Draco’s smile never wavered. “Winston,” he said, “has told me is not depressed.”

“Ha!” crowed Harry, jabbing his finger at Draco. “I told you!”

“But,” continued Draco as if Harry hadn’t embarrassed himself at all, “he _is_ sad.”

Harry stopped his wild finger-jabbing and slumped back in his seat. “Sad?”

Draco nodded.

Harry frowned. “What’s he got to be sad about? I feed him. He has a castle. It looks just like Hogwarts, see?” 

Draco didn’t look at the castle, he didn’t take his eyes off Harry. “He’s lonely,” he said, still soft, still understanding, still gentle.

Winston swam around to Harry’s side of the bowl and looked up at him. _Lonely?_ And okay, Harry had to admit he didn’t talk to the fish. But that wasn’t personal—before Luna turned up a month ago, Harry didn’t talk much to _anyone_. hadn’t needed too because he hardly ever left his house. He hadn’t taken up a new career since leaving the Aurors. He hardly needed the money and, besides, he had no idea what he could possibly do. Every idea for a new career had made his stomach wobble, his head ache, his throat tight. Sometimes just the thought of walking outside his flat gave him all those sensations, so it was just safest to stay indoors, despite the echo.

Harry frowned to himself and had to concede that yes, perhaps a life trapped in a fishbowl with no one to talk to and with nothing to do might be a little lonely. 

“Okay,” said Harry. The little fish had swum to the surface and was making his _pop pop pop_ noises and Harry wished he was a pet whisperer too so he could say sorry. He sort of felt like bursting into tears, if the truth be told, though why he felt so badly for a sad fish he wasn’t sure. “While I’m not conceding that you can communicate without even opening your mouth to non-magical creatures—” Draco rolled his eyes “—I am prepared to admit you _might_ have a point.”

Draco laughed. “Why, thank you, Potter. I’ll update the testimonials section of my website to include your ringing endorsement.”

“ _You_ have a _website_? Wait, no, that doesn’t matter.” Harry gently lifted his finger and pressed it to the side of the bowl. Winston ducked below the water and swam up to Harry and mouthed at the glass, right where Harry had pressed his finger. “So what do I do about it?”

Draco was silent for a long while. Eventually, Harry looked up to see what he was doing and found him watching Harry with unabashed curiosity. He didn’t look at all embarrassed to be caught staring. “Well,” he said and his voice was so calm, so quiet, so lovely that Harry had to wonder what had happened to the sneering, snarking, sniffling boy he had once known. Was he still there inside? Did it matter? “If _you_ were lonely,” Draco continued, a careful edge to his voice, “what would _you_ want someone to do about it?”

Harry swallowed—for some reason his mouth felt dry and raw.

What would he want?

He shifted his finger against the glass, drawing a simple ‘hi’ against it. Winston followed the path of his finger. “I guess I’d want someone to talk to,” he said after a while. He cleared his throat. “Someone who understands that sometimes I don’t want to talk but also someone who has the courage to force it out of me when I’m buried too deep inside of myself and can’t find a way out. I think … I think it’d have to be someone who gets it, you know? Someone who knows what’s it like.” Harry didn’t look up at Draco—he couldn’t—but he felt the other man watching him carefully, listening in a way that made Harry feel brave. Braver than he’d felt in a long time.

“And I guess I’d want something to do,” he continued. “Something that forced me out of my head, something that made me feel like I was doing good in the world. So I wasn’t just sitting around all day staring at the wall, saying nothing, doing nothing, being nothing. Maybe that other person—the person I could talk to—would help me figure out what to do.”

“That sounds nice,” said Draco. “That sounds really nice.”

Harry nodded. “Yeah, it does sound nice, doesn’t it?

Finally, Harry looked up. He wasn’t at all surprised to find Draco was looking back at him, a smile of understanding in his eyes. Harry found he couldn’t look away. _Such a pretty grey_ , he thought. Dark and light at the same time, the perfect mixture of both. He felt like that himself, often. Both light and dark. He was used to people thinking of him as the Saviour, as some beacon of all that is good and pure and _light_ but he knew he wasn’t that. He knew the darkness he had waded through to survive the war—the kind of darkness that will always leave a mark.

Harry knew the man sitting opposite had done the same—but he’d had to survive with the darkness living in his home, he’d had to survive knowing that the darkness had been flowing through his veins—a gift from his parents—before he even had a choice.

 _Draco gets it_ , thought Harry. _Draco probably has his own echoes._

Who chases his echoes away?

Harry cleared his throat, finally looking down again. “But that’s me. I mean, Winston’s not me, right? That stuff might not even work for a goldfish.”

“It could,” said Draco. “You could talk to him. Maybe get a bigger tank so you can fit in more interesting stuff.”

Harry tapped the glass and Winston swam in a tight circle, excited. “And I could …” He trailed off, suddenly feeling uncertain of himself.

“Yes?” prompted Draco. Harry felt him lean in, both of them leaning over the fishbowl until their heads almost met in the middle, a perfect combination of dark and light.

Harry cleared his throat. “I was just thinking that I could get another fish. For company, you know.” Harry flicked his gaze to meet Draco’s. They were close but it didn’t worry Harry. It didn’t worry him at all.

Draco nodded. “Yes. Company would be nice.”

Harry felt the puff of each words against his skin. “Because I mean, I can talk to him but … another goldfish would be better. Because they’d be the same. They get each other. Come form the same place and have experienced similar things and …”

Harry looked up and found himself lost in grey, grey, grey again. It was nice. It was so wonderfully, unexpectedly _nice_.

“I think that would be an excellent idea, Harry,” said Draco, almost a whisper. “Everyone needs a friend.”

Harry nodded. Friends. Yes. Especially the unexpected ones.

“Draco, I—”

Harry jerked back when Marge poked her head around the office door and barked, “Mr Malfoy?”

Draco leant back, straightening his collar. His eyes lingered on Harry for a moment before he wrenched his gaze away to look at the receptionist. “Yes, Marge?”

“Your two o’clock is here, Mr Malfoy,” she said. “Shall I make him a cup of tea?”

“Ah,” said Draco, gaze flicking across Harry again. “Yes. I guess you’d better.”

Harry ran his finger in a zig-zag along the outside of the glass bowl as Winston chased him, feeling the heat in his face reach his ears. He didn’t mind though. He rather liked it.

“As you please, Mr Malfoy,” said the receptionist. She made to close the door again but paused. “Oh, and Mr Malfoy?”

Draco’s shoulders rose and fell as he took a deep breath. Harry shared a smile with him. “Yes, Marge?”

“I think you’ll find Ferdinand has vanished again.”

“What?!”

As Draco looked around frantically, Marge saw herself out with a smirk.

“Damn that blasted cat,” said Draco. “How does he even get out? This is a locked room. There is no way.” He opened drawers and lifted piles of paper and searched under the desk but the cat was gone. Harry watched the whole scene with unexpected joy.

 _I could get used to this_ , he thought.

“I’m sorry, Potter,” said Draco, running his hands through his hair, tangling the messy waves, “but we’ll have to cut this short. I have another appointment and my cat hates me.”

Harry chuckled. “Quite all right, Malfoy.”

He stood, scooping up the fishbowl and let a harried Draco guide him out of the office and into the reception. Marge was handing a white tea to a middle-aged man in a tweed suit. “Sugar is for plebeians, dear,” she said and then turned to scowl at Harry.

“Marge, I’m just going to see Mr Potter out and then deal with the Ferdinand issue,” said Draco with a professional smile. “Then I’ll be right back to see Mr Ingram and his turtle.”

Mr Ingram frowned at his cup of tea. There was a small turtle crawling on his lap.

Harry was led down the hallway with Draco’s hand resting on the small of his back, past the black and white photos and out the front door. On the bottom step he turned to look back at the man who, even when he was absent for six years, had a way of worming his way into Harry’s thoughts.

“Sorry your cat keeps running away,” said Harry.

Draco waved his concern away. “It’s okay. I can see him at least. He’s across the road tormenting the postman.” Harry turned and saw that Draco was right, Ferdinand was standing guard at a gate while the postman danced on the spot, anxiously trying to work out a way to deliver his letters without getting too close to the cat. 

Harry turned back to find Draco folding his arms with a wicked smile. He leant against the doorframe, smile turning softer the longer he looked at Harry.

Harry glanced down at Winston, who was hovering near the surface, _pop pop popping_ at him. Harry was no pet whisperer but he felt for sure he knew exactly what the little fish was trying to tell him.

He cleared his throat. “Um, Malfoy?”

“Potter?”

“If I got another goldfish, would you mind having a word with him, too? Just … it might be a good idea, you know? To make sure Winston adjusts and the new fish is happy and—”

“Yes,” Draco said, his smirk on the right side of infuriating. “That is an excellent idea, Potter. Though it might require a few sessions, just to make the transition as smooth as possible.”

Harry nodded vigorously. “You could even do it at my flat. So you could, ah, see them in their natural habitat. You know?”

Draco smiled. “Exactly.”

Harry smiled too. “Good. I’d like that.”

“I’d like it too,” said Draco.

They held each other’s gaze, both turning a little pink but unable to look away all the same. _What a thoroughly, wonderfully unexpected day,_ thought Harry.

“Best go see my two o’clock,” said Draco, pushing off from the doorframe. “I have a turtle with low self-esteem to take care of.”

“Of course you do,” said Harry fondly. “But I’ll see you again.”

“You absolutely will,” said Draco.

Harry turned and left Draco to save the postman from his menace of a cat.

“Well, Winston,” said Harry, wandering up the tree-lined street, “how about we buy Luna a big bunch of flowers and then visit the pet store? We’ve got some changes to make.”

Winston _pop pop popped_.

Harry rather agreed with him. 


End file.
